


The One That Got Away

by SinnamonSpider



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Meta, Post-Episode: s15e20 Carry On
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:34:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27916093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinnamonSpider/pseuds/SinnamonSpider
Summary: A familiar face comes to escort Dean onwards.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 3
Kudos: 32





	The One That Got Away

**Author's Note:**

> I'm in the middle of my s4 rewatch and I just felt like fixing that whole mess, yanno? Somebody had to do it.

When he opens his eyes, he's looking at his body.

It's happened before, of course, so it's not a shock. It just hurts: not the rebar lodged in his tissue, obviously, but seeing Sam slumped over him, body convulsing with sobs. 

So much for no pain in the afterlife.

He watches, because there isn't much else he can do, as Sam braces his feet and lifts his corpse free, lowers it carefully to the straw-strewn floor, and follows it down, wrapping himself around lifeless limbs. 

Then someone is at his side. 

He turns and gets his first post-death surprise. " _Tessa_ _?_ "

Their last encounter hadn't ended well and he's wary, tense, watching her carefully. 

She smiles at him, that enigmatic curve of lips he remembers from all those years back, after the accident. "Dean."

"How are you - " he pauses. "Uh, you died." He leaves off the fact that it was at his hand, sort of. 

"So I've been told," she says blandly. "By the one who brought me back."

"And who was _that_ _?_ " Difficult thing, to bring something back from the Empty, and he can't see Billie having done it for kicks - and just who _is_ Death now, anyways?

She looks pensive. "I guess it was...God," she says slowly. "But not God as I've ever seen him. He was... different." She smiles a bit wider. "He said you'd said my death was, and I quote, 'a lame retcon'. I gather that means you saw it happen." She tilts her head. "Was it?"

He gets it now, and nods. "Super lame."

She nods. "Well, lucky me, I guess."

"Yeah, I guess." He hesitates. "Tessa, are you - do you feel like…are you an angel?"

She blinks, and he thinks this is the first time he's seen her confused. "Dean, your injury was to your internal organs, not your head. How could I be an angel? I'm a reaper."

"Cool," he says, pleased. "Yeah, sorry. It never made sense to me either."

She chooses to ignore that. "Well, here we are. This where you turn me down for the prom again?"

"No. Not this time."

"Ah. Older and wiser, for once." She holds out her hand. "Let's go."

He draws back. "Not yet."

"Dean." Her face hardens. "You literally just said - "

"I'm coming, I swear." He looks back to Sam. "I just have to make sure he does what he's supposed to do."

She softens. "If you're gone, it won't matter if he doesn't. You'll be gone."

He doesn't say anything, and the only sound in the barn are Sam's sobs, deep and wrenching. "I know. But I have to make sure." He gives her a look from the corner of his eye. "I think you owe me."

She frowns. "Maybe. But I've been burned by you before, Dean Winchester."

But she waits, and they stand in the silence until the sound changes: Sam chokes and turns sharply, vomits into the straw, stomach turned inside out from crying. 

He takes a half-step forward; the instinct to rub his brother's back, hold his stupid hair out of his face like he would with a girl, is apparently soul-deep. It takes effort not to keep moving. 

Sam wipes his mouth with the back of a shaky hand and climbs to his feet, swollen eyes looking down at the body. "I'm coming back," he rasps, voice wrecked. 

Then he turns and leaves the barn. Dean hears the squeak of Baby's doors and closes his eyes. 

"So what finally got you?" 

He opens them again. Tessa is standing over his corpse, clinical. "Besides the rebar, obviously." 

He casts around, pokes the body of the big vamp with his toe, a bit surprised he can make the contact. "This fucker." He frowns. "Not exactly blaze of glory, huh?" Looks up at her. "Or 'plucked from the battlefield', wasn't it?"

She tilts her head. "Of course it is. This was your battlefield. Every time." She smiles again. "Still a warrior's death, Dean." 

He snorts. "Yeah, well. Could have been worse, I guess. Could have been squashed like a bug by God." 

"I won't ask."

"Yeah, that's probably best."

There's the squeak of the doors again then, and it seems too quick, but time doesn't have much meaning anymore. 

He feels better when he sees Sam again: arms full of old bedsheets they keep in the trunk for this very reason. Eyes still red, grief already carving deeper lines on his face. He looks...resolute, but not in a dangerous way, a desperate way. Good.

Sam starts with the bodies of the vamps, drags them into a haphazard pile. Chucks heads around with an indifference that would make him laugh, on another day. 

Gasoline, then, and normally the scent would tickle his nostrils, one of his favourite in the world because it means Baby. But there's no smell now. 

A match strikes and the bodies burn behind Sam's back as he starts to wrap the corpse, working methodically even as the tears drip down to splatter the sheets. When he's done, Sam takes a huge, shuddering breath, and lifts the wrapped body off the floor, staggering at the dead weight. 

"Ah, that last piece of pie," he says fondly. Tessa rolls her eyes. 

They leave the burning barn behind, he and Tessa riding weirdly in the same space that his body is taking up in the backseat. It's probably unneeded, but one last ride in his Baby sounds like a good way to finish. 

Sam builds the pyre in a clearing in the woods nearby with the same dogged intent as before. Salt and gasoline and his own Zippo, rescued from his pocket beforehand, and he watches the smoke spiral upwards, watches Sam watch him burn. 

He knows it's nearly done when he starts to feel strangely untethered, like he has to concentrate harder to stay where he is. Tessa takes his hand. "Ready?"

One last look at that beloved face, obscured by smoke and flame, and then he can turn to her. "Ready."

And so they go. 

  
  



End file.
